Just be glad friends are getting vaccinated right now

Dear Carolyn: I don’t know how to deal with my feelings about how the COVID-19 vaccinations are rolling out. I have a close group of friends, none of whom are high-risk. A couple have managed to get vaccinated through what I think is some level of abuse of privilege. One is a doctor, but hasn’t seen a live patient or stepped into a store since March, but qualified for a vaccine because she’s affiliated with a hospital that offered them. Another also-fullyremote worker lives in a state that allows the public to volunteer at vaccination centers and offers them a vaccine, which feels problematic because only so many people can volunteer a full day of time.

I’m conflicted because ideally I think everyone who wants to should be able to get vaccinated right now as doses sit on shelves. But something about these specific stories isn’t sitting right with me.

I’ve reacted by just not participating in this group’s conversations, but is there a better way?

— Anonymous

Anonymous: Yes. Release it. Let go of any sense of responsibility for individual outcomes like this. Tell your friends, “Good for you,” and be glad for each microstep toward collective immunity that isn’t entitled: bit.ly/VxFakers.

The rules are the rules and neither you nor your friends made them. When the rules serve up a legitimate opportunity, it makes sense to take it.

You are certainly entitled not to, in hopes that your dose will go to someone you believe needs it more.

But neither you nor your friends would have any say in who gets the shots you turn down, if anyone, so who’s to say your sacrifice serves a greater good? The only certainty you have is that shots need to find arms, so when your number is called, it’s OK to stand up and say “Here!”

But there’s a theme here that will outlast the vaccine-rollout story, and leads to another point:

When something dominates the national news, it’s common to feel highly engaged but also mostly, if not entirely, helpless. We feel it but we can’t fix it. So our very normal, healthy impulses to do something start to wander around, looking for a place to go.

And like any entity with a lot of energy and nothing to do, these impulses start to cause trouble around the neighborhood. Namely, we can feel very tempted to judge, correct, fixate on, fume at and try to micromanage what we see.

Sometimes bystanders must get involved, of course, as the last line of defense against bullies, abusers, even terrorists.

But most of the time, we risk doing more harm by butting in than by a strategic choice to look the other way.

So when you catch your sense of righteousness loitering outside the minimart, looking for trouble, please call it home and find it something constructive to do.